Access Anywhere — Web, Desktop, CLI, and Beyond

When choosing a productivity tool, you often face a familiar dilemma: web apps are powerful but useless offline, desktop apps feel great but lock your data locally, and CLI tools are developer-friendly but lack a visual interface. The root cause is the absence of a Single Source of Truth — each platform is an island, and your data is scattered across them. UnDercontrol's answer: four form factors, one data source. And that data source is entirely under your control — self-hosted on your own server or stored on your local disk, never passing through any third party. Privacy and security are defined by you.

Web App — Remote Access, Zero Install

UnDercontrol's web frontend is built with Vite + React + TypeScript and serves as the foundation of the entire platform. Open a browser and you're in — no installation required.

Core capabilities:

• Full task, budget, and expense management
• Tiptap rich-text editor (code blocks, Mermaid diagrams, tables, checklists)
• AI chat integration (supports Claude, OpenAI, and other providers)
• SSE real-time notifications with multi-tab sync
• Responsive design that works on mobile
• Bilingual interface (Chinese / English)

The web app also serves as the rendering layer for the Electron desktop app — same codebase, zero duplication.

Typical scenarios

• On the go, quickly check task progress or approve expenses from your phone's browser
• Team members collaborate instantly — just open a link, no software to install
• The convergence point for all clients — docs pushed from CLI, tasks created on desktop, pages clipped by the extension — all viewable and manageable in one place

Electron Desktop App — Offline First, Local Data

The desktop app is far more than a web wrapper. It embeds a full Go backend and SQLite database, ready to use out of the box with no server configuration.

Embedded backend architecture

• Automatically launches the Go backend on startup
• Dynamic port allocation to avoid conflicts
• Data stored in ~/Library/Application Support/UnDercontrol/ (macOS)
• Fully offline-capable — works without any network connection

Remote backend mode

• The desktop app can also connect to a remote server, sharing the same data source as the web app
• Switch the API address in settings — no reinstallation needed

Daemon mode

• Background daemon process that listens to the task queue via SSE
• Receives and automatically executes remotely dispatched tasks — ideal for AI Agent workflows

Desktop-exclusive features

• System tray (Windows) — minimize to tray for quick access
• .md file association — double-click a Markdown file to open it in UnDercontrol
• Multi-window editing — open multiple editor, task, and sticky-note windows simultaneously
• Workspace management — local terminal windows for running commands

Build targets

• macOS — DMG installer, Universal Binary (x64 + ARM64)
• Windows — NSIS installer (x64)
• Linux — AppImage (x64)

Typical scenarios

• On a plane or train with no network — create tasks and edit documents as usual; everything syncs when you're back online
• At home, connect the desktop app to your company server — see exactly the same data as the web app
• Receive remotely dispatched AI tasks via Daemon and execute them automatically on your local machine

CLI — kubectl-Style, AI Agent Friendly

The ud CLI is a terminal tool designed for developers and automation, using a kubectl-style verb-resource command system.

Interactive TUI

Run ud to enter a full-screen TUI for browsing and managing tasks with your keyboard.

One-liner operations

ud get task                          # list tasks
ud describe task abc123              # view details
ud apply -f task.md                  # create/update from file
ud task query "status:todo tag:api"  # query and filter
ud task nl "tasks completed last week" # natural language query

AI Agent integration

ud prompt <skill-name> outputs skill documents that teach AI Agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and others) how to operate tasks via the ud CLI. Structured command output and Markdown-formatted input make it a natural fit for AI Agents to read and write.

Typical scenarios

• CI/CD pipelines automatically push release notes to ud — the team reads them on the web, no need to dig through Git logs
• Technical docs in your code repo (architecture designs, API specs, runbooks) are synced to ud via scripts — non-developers can read them on the web without accessing the repository
• AI Agents automatically record progress and decisions in task notes during coding — the team sees updates in real time
• Ops scripts periodically collect inspection results and ud apply them as tasks, forming a traceable operations log

Chrome Extension — One-Click Clipping

The Chrome extension turns any web page into an UnDercontrol task.

• One-click save — captures a full page snapshot (HTML + all embedded resources)
• Markdown extraction — automatically extracts the page body as clean Markdown
• Offline mode — save directly to local disk without logging in
• Remote mode — log in to create an UnDercontrol task directly, with the snapshot uploaded as an attachment

Typical scenarios

• Researching competitors — clip product pages as tasks, then compare and organize on the web later
• Found a great technical article — clip it as Markdown into ud for the team to share
• Received a customer bug report on a web page — clip it as a bug task with full context attached

SSE Real-Time Sync

All clients connected to the same backend — whether browser tabs, the desktop app, or another device — stay in sync via SSE (Server-Sent Events).

• Task status changes, new comments, attachment uploads — all events pushed in real time
• Daemon SSE Hub dispatches commands to desktop Daemon instances
• Workspace session state is automatically coordinated between the desktop app and the backend

One Codebase, Consistent Experience

UnDercontrol's multi-platform strategy isn't "build once for each platform." Instead:

• Web app is the single frontend codebase
• Electron loads the web build directly — zero code duplication
• CLI shares the same API and data model
• Chrome extension uses the same API endpoints

Capability	Web	Desktop	CLI	Extension
Remote API access	✅	✅	✅	✅
Embedded backend	❌	✅ (switchable to remote)	❌	❌
Offline mode	❌	✅	❌	✅
System tray	❌	✅	❌	❌
TUI interface	❌	❌	✅	❌
Background Daemon	❌	✅	❌	❌
Web clipping	❌	❌	❌	✅
Real-time SSE	✅	✅	❌	❌
AI Agent friendly	✅	✅	✅	❌

And there's more — the open API lets you build any client you want.

Beyond Official Clients — Build Your Own

Beyond the four official clients, UnDercontrol exposes a full RESTful API. Generate an API Key in your profile settings, pair it with the Swagger docs, and build your own client in any language — Python scripts, automation bots, internal tool integrations, or even your own mobile app.

• API Key authentication — generate in Profile → API Key, call with Bearer Token
• Scoped permissions — authorize independently by module (Tasks, Expenses, Budgets, Files, AI)
• Swagger docs — browse all endpoints at https://your-server/swagger/index.html
• X-UD-Channel audit — custom channel identifier to trace every request's origin
• CI/CD friendly — environment variable configuration for seamless automation pipeline integration

Typical scenarios

• Build a Slack Bot in Python — your team types /task in Slack to create and query ud tasks
• Connect your internal admin panel's ticketing system to ud via API for bidirectional status sync
• Build a native mobile app calling the same API for a personalized phone experience
• Monitoring system alerts automatically create ud tasks with context attached — on-call engineers handle them on the web

---

Different scenarios, the right tool for the job — data always in sync, experience always consistent.